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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22456837">in loving memory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxxxtrot/pseuds/foxxxtrot'>foxxxtrot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/M, heartbreak aftermath, ortega is a mess</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:33:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,987</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22456837</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxxxtrot/pseuds/foxxxtrot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He is asked to write a eulogy for Sidestep.</p>
<p>For <i>her.</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ortega/Sidestep (Fallen Hero)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>in loving memory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a repost from tumblr, because I <i>just</i> realized I never actually got around to posting it here. Oh well.</p>
<p>Anyways, all aboard the angst train.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He is asked to write a eulogy for Sidestep.</p>
<p>For <em>her</em>.</p>
<p>There is, after all, no one who knows – <em>knew</em>, god, he forgets sometimes<em> – </em>her better. No one left alive, anyhow.</p>
<p>He mourns that fact nearly as much as he mourns her. All that she was, all that she could have been, as magnificent and grand as the universe, filled with stars and wonder and more mysteries than all the scientists in the world could uncover in a lifetime –</p>
<p>And he is the only one left to tell her story.</p>
<p><em>Him. </em>The very idiot who got her killed in the first place.</p>
<p>He wonders if he should really be the one to do this, if that wouldn’t be akin to blasphemy. If he even deserves to be at the funeral at all.</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strike>He wonders if she blamed him, in those last few moments before she hit the ground.</strike>
  </em>
</p>
<p>But not going would be running away from the consequences of his actions, and she never liked cowards. He will be there, and he will give the speech. It’s his duty, both as the Marshal, and as her –</p>
<p>Her – well.</p>
<p><em>Hers</em>.</p>
<p>So he tries to give her the farewell she deserves, put her to rest with a speech that honors her memory, that shares a piece of who she was with the rest of the world. He tries to make it dignified, noble, tries to put the hurricane of feelings inside his heart into coherent, pretty words –</p>
<p>But he doesn’t know how. He’s no poet.</p>
<p>He’s a mess.</p>
<p>He cries at the funeral. It’s not the manly tears of a soldier, a warrior, the <em>fucking</em> Marshal of Los Diablos; no, it’s the ugly, wet sobbing of  boy, a broken hearted lover. And oh, how the cameras love it, to see the Rangers’ poster boy reduced to this pathetic wreck, but he can’t bring himself to care.</p>
<p>His best friend is dead. His heart was torn out of his chest and put in that coffin to be buried, forever its sole occupant, as even her body is gone, lost.</p>
<p>He tries to catch his breath, to compose himself. He tries to be strong, to be the Marshal. He tries to give the fucking speech; tries to do right by her, one last time, and put his pain into pretty words.</p>
<p>But he’s no poet, and when that reporter starts speaking things he shouldn’t, he instead honors her memory the only way he knows how.</p>
<p>He’s disgusted with himself.  </p>
<p>He quits the Rangers.</p>
<p>It’s just as well, he knows what everyone is saying of him. That he’s a failure, that he got Sidestep and Anathema both killed. That he’s out of control, that he’s a wreck.</p>
<p>They are right.</p>
<p>It’s just as well.</p>
<p>It would never be the same again, anyway.</p>
<p>Nothing ever will.</p>
<p><em>He </em>never will.</p>
<p>There’s a hole inside him. Right in his chest, right where she used to be. It grows and it grows, expanding until the void takes over everything in his life. The world loses its colors, the food loses its flavors. He feels empty, and it <em>hurts</em>, a physical pain that leaves him breathless. He feels like he’ll never be happy again, never be able to feel anything but pain.</p>
<p>So he tries to fill that void, the only way he knows how.</p>
<p>He laughs too loud and parties too hard, eats too little and drinks too much. If he closes his eyes and gets just doped up enough, he can almost make himself believe it’s her he’s tasting on a stranger’s mouth. It almost eases the pain, almost fills the emptiness. He can almost forget she’s gone, even if just for a while.</p>
<p>Almost.</p>
<p>It’s a work in progress, so he keeps on drinking, and smoking, and snorting, until he can make himself whole again.</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strike>Until she comes back home to him.</strike>
  </em>
</p>
<p>It never works, but hey – he can’t be faulted for trying.</p>
<p>Time goes by in a blur. Days become weeks, weeks become months, but he doesn’t notice. It feels like freefalling, the moment after you take a jump and before you land when time loses its meaning.  </p>
<p>Freefalling.</p>
<p>How ironic.  </p>
<p>She might have been the one who crashed through that window, but he fell alongside her. He’s <em>still </em>falling - not out of a window <em><strike>not yet, at least</strike> </em>but into strangers’ beds, drunk on the sidewalk, down on his knees on the disgusting bathroom floor of a bar, sobbing. He keeps on falling, just like she did, because as long as he’s falling he’s not <em>splattered on the ground, crushed, limbs at odd angles, and that image is forever seared into his brain, why did he look down, why couldn’t he stop her, save her</em> –</p>
<p>He knows he’ll crash, eventually. He’s not a flier, he can’t stave off gravity forever. He knows the ground will catch up to him, one day, and that hitting it will hurt like a motherfucker. Break him. He knows this intimately, as his mods can attest</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strike>Maybe he’s hoping he won’t survive it, this time.</strike>
  </em>
</p>
<p>In the end, this proves to be the same as every other jump he’s ever taken. The thrill of the fall delicious, but too short lived, always ending so abruptly it rattles his teeth. This time, however, he’s not bracing himself for the impact. He keeps his eyes closed, blissfully oblivious to how fast the ground is approaching.</p>
<p>It’s a beautiful morning outside. Not that he can see for himself, not from his place sprawled on the couch, but he can guess as much from the sounds coming from the streets. Laughter. Cheerful music. Light conversation. People are walking their dogs, hanging out with their friends and families. Happy.</p>
<p>The TV drones on, the only source of light in the room. It helps keep him numb, fogs his brain almost as well as the glass of whiskey he’s nursing.  They report the latest celebrity gossip. Show news on some recent robbery. Advertise some new garbage product or another.</p>
<p>He didn’t brace himself for the impact, kept his eyes closed the whole time. He doesn’t see it coming, not until it’s too late.</p>
<p>It’s so abrupt.</p>
<p>
  <em>They forgot her.</em>
</p>
<p>He finally crashes.</p>
<p>Hard.</p>
<p>That single, small thought hits with all the force of gravity.  It bursts his lungs, shatters his bones, cracks his skull right open. He feels like he should be dead. He should be, but somehow his hands still move, shakily, desperately flipping through the channels over and over and over. Nothing. There’s nothing.</p>
<p>Outside, the sun is shining.</p>
<p>They forgot her. They’ve moved on.</p>
<p>He knows he shouldn’t be so surprised, so horrified. The world won’t stop moving because of the death of one person, and she wasn’t even the only one who died that day. He knows this, on a very personal level – she’s wasn’t the first person he’s lost to this city.</p>
<p>So why is this different? Why does it enrage him so that the world has moved on, that it didn’t die when she did?</p>
<p>Maybe it’s because she was so young, had so much potential.  Maybe it’s because he’s directly responsible for it, failed to keep her safe, failed to save her, let her slip right trough his fingers like smoke.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s because she was <em>Sidestep</em>, she had saved this garbage pile of a city so many times, over and over, and yet they couldn’t even bother to mourn her for a while before getting right back to their useless lives, before allowing her to become just another dead hero, another statistic.</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strike>Maybe it’s because he loved her, and never got the chance to tell her.</strike>
  </em>
</p>
<p>And yet, didn’t he try to do the same?</p>
<p>He can never forget her. He can never get over her. He knows that. But he did try, didn’t he? He carries the stench of vomit and someone else’s cheap perfume right now as proof of that.</p>
<p>He hates the world for moving on with their lives, but what has he been doing lately? Quitting his job, isolating himself from his friends and family (the ones who remain, at least), stumbling drunk on the streets –</p>
<p>All for her. So he can <em>forget</em> her.</p>
<p>What does it say about him, that he chooses to bury himself inside strangers so he can pretend he didn’t bury her only a few months ago?</p>
<p>What does it say about <em>her</em>?</p>
<p>He hates the world for moving on with their lives, but what must it look like to them, to see him crashing parties like a frat boy so soon after her death? How little must he have thought of her, how little must he have cared, that he was so quick to forget his grief and go back to his old, wild ways?</p>
<p>He feels sick. Not only he had to go and get her killed, he also managed to shit on her memory by giving the impression she was too unimportant to be worthy of being mourned.</p>
<p><em>God, </em>he couldn’t even give the fucking speech at her funeral.</p>
<p>The speech.</p>
<p>It suddenly clicks into place. The agonizing pain in his heart no lessened, the void in his chest no smaller, but still – he’s <em>sober</em>. For the first time in god knows how long, he can actually hear his own thoughts, the lightning storm inside his head mellowed to a drizzle. He feels resigned, but determined.</p>
<p>He has wasted so much time already, and so many opportunities, but it’s not too late. Just like that, he knows what he has to do.</p>
<p>He can’t ever undo the damage he’s done, can’t change what’s happened. She’s gone, and he can’t ever bring her back.</p>
<p>But, maybe, just maybe, he can try to make things a little better. Do some damage control, attone for his sins.</p>
<p>At the very least, he can spend the rest of his life trying.</p>
<p>He <em>has</em> To. He owes her that much.</p>
<p>He can never forget her. He will never move on, or get over her. He will never let her go.</p>
<p>And that’s okay. That’s how it should be.</p>
<p>He had been asked to write her a eulogy, to put into respectful, dignified words all that he knew of her, all that she was and how much she meant to him. But he’s no good at that, and he failed.</p>
<p>He’s no poet, he’s just a broken man who misses his best friend and is torn apart with guilt.</p>
<p>But he is – <em>is, </em>present tense, because this will never change<em> –</em> her best friend. Her lover.</p>
<p>Hers.</p>
<p>He’s no poet, but that’s okay. He’s not one for composed, pretty words; he’s a man of action, a creature of emotion. So he’ll honor her memory the only way he knows how.</p>
<p>If he can’t write her a eulogy, he’ll become it instead.</p>
<p>He will be her epitath. He will share her story with the world, tell it to anyone who will listen, keeping her memory alive. Make sure they don’t forget. He will be her effigy, so they will always see her when they look at him. He will be the man he used to, her best friend, her not-so-secret lover. The one with the shit-eating grin, and the terrible jokes, and carefree attitude. The one who was a hero, and always tried to do the right thing.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if it hurts. It doesn’t matter that he’s broken, that he no longer remembers what if feels like to be himself anymore, that he barely remembers how to be human. He’ll pretend. He’ll wear a mask - not as Charge, but that of Ricardo Ortega. He’ll glue himself back together from the shattered pieces of the man he used be, shard by shard, like a sculpture. He’ll become a living, breathing monument to her memory.</p>
<p>He will make himself stop falling and get up. Keep moving. Keep living.</p>
<p>Keep pretending.</p>
<p>For her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this game fucks me up so bad, man. I love it.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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